


Headlines

by gingasaur



Category: Murphy Brown (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-24
Updated: 2008-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-15 18:44:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingasaur/pseuds/gingasaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim’s here bright and early, just like he swore he’d be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Headlines

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for prompt #219 at [theatrical_muse](http://community.livejournal.com/theatrical_muse/).

It's a beautiful day. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the sky is free of clouds. It’s not too hot, it’s not too cold, and there’s just enough of a breeze to prevent the air from getting stagnant.

Somehow she’d expected it to rain today. Somehow she’d expected it to rain really, really hard. She’d crossed her fingers for black clouds and lightning and flooding and flight cancellations, and what did it get her? A perfect day.

Glaring up at the sky, she mumbles, “Fat lot of good _you_ did”.

She winces when she hears the doorbell.

\---

Jim’s here bright and early, just like he swore he’d be.

“You couldn’t have gotten in a car accident?” she asks him.

“No,” he replies with a smile. “I tend to refrain from driving like you do.”

That gets a laugh out of her. A dark laugh. A heavy laugh. They don’t say anything after that, and she turns away from him.

Before this moment, she’d never really noticed all the swirls in the wood floor. They look strange. They’re awfully squiggly. Were some of them smiling at her? Some of them even looked like the lightning bolts that God had failed to deliver today. She closes her eyes and thinks, _It’s too early for this,_ despite the fact that “last night” ran straight into “this morning” with no breaks for sleep.

Without any preamble, she says, “I’m not going.”

It’s simple. It’s straightforward. It gets the point across. And it gets Jim to ask, “What?”

“I’m not going,” she repeats, turning back to face him. Her chest rises and falls a little faster. Panic would like an audience with her, but she swallows and says, “I was wrong. I can handle this. I didn’t know that before, but I know that now.”

He’s already moving toward her. “Murphy-”

“No, Jim.” She takes a step back and he stops with one hand still reaching out to her. “No. I’m not going. I don’t need anyone to help me. It’s under control.”

“I should’ve gotten on the plane to Panama,” she continues. “It took _months_ to get Noriega to agree to go on camera, and I let it go for _this?_ No.” She swallows again and looks Jim straight in the eyes. The glare she gives him sends a real shiver up his spine. “I’m _not going._ ”

For just a second, she catches a sad sparkle in Jim’s eyes, but he blinks it away before she can use it to her advantage. His hand returns to his side, and very slowly, he begins moving toward her. Suddenly it’s like the lion and the lion tamer. Will he really go so far as to try to stick his head in her jaws?

“Murphy.” His voice still reeks of that excessive gravitas even when it’s softer. “There’s no use looking back on the Noriega interview now. It’s gone. It doesn’t _matter._ ”

“Of course it _matters_ ,” she spits back.

“No, it doesn’t.” He’s so close now, much closer than she ever thought she’d let him get. Instinctively, she jerks back, but there’s not much room between her and the bookshelves now. She’s walking straight into a corner and she knows it, and evidently, so does he. Suddenly there’s a reassuring hand on her arm, a soft smile on his face, and he’s saying stupid things like, “ _You’re_ what matters,” and, “You’re far more important than any interview”. Shouldn’t there be soft, cheesy piano music accompanying this crap? But there’s nothing, only a lot of silence.

“This is a new one for you,” she flatly remarks, staring down at his hand. “Since when are you the touchy-feely type?”

He looks down at his hand as well, and his eyes widen when he sees it still resting on her arm. She almost laughs out loud when he jumps back. Obviously startled, he clears his throat a few times. “I’m sorry,” he quickly says. “I- I don’t know what that was.” Funny what alcoholism brings out in _other_ people.

“But I meant what I said,” he insists. He’s straight as a board again, even though his voice still isn’t as strong as it usually is. “You’ve made a brave decision here. I made a promise to you that I would drive you to the airport so you can get on that plane. And I’m going to keep it. Let’s go.”

“ _No._ ”

“Oh, for the love of Mike.” In a flash, whatever patience he had is gone. He’s through with the games now, and he walks back into her personal space again (although, to her credit, her personal space encompasses the entire townhouse at the moment). “We’re _worried_ about you!” There’s that familiar worldly volume again, that familiar enunciation of every single word. It’s startling. “We simply _won’t_ stand by and let this take hold of you anymore! I’m getting you on that plane if it’s the last thing I do.”

As soon as his hand is on her arm again, she snarls a particularly vicious, “Go to hell”, but it doesn’t deter him at all. He starts walking and, to her shock, starts taking her with him, and she in turn begins to punch him and claw him, but he doesn’t wince, not even once.

\---

When the neighbors hear the shouting, they don’t know it’s because Murphy Brown is getting dragged kicking and screaming out of her own house. For a split second, they wonder who’s dying, until they remember just who exactly lives next to them.

\---

What kind of a miracle calls for there to be an available seat on a packed flight from D.C. to L.A.? She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t care when she shoves him out of the way so she can take the window seat for herself. _He won’t mind_ , she thinks. _He’ll probably just read_. And he does; as soon as the plane levels off, the newspapers he bought in the gift shop come right out, and he stays engrossed in them all the way from West Virginia to Kansas.

She only wishes she had something besides the view to keep her occupied. There’s too much to think about when there’s nothing to do but stare out the window: too many fresh white cigarettes to envision and too many imaginary smoky liquors waterfalling onto ice cubes. There’s so much to think about, in fact, that she barely notices the beverage cart coming around again. She’d pretended to be sleeping the first time it showed itself, but now there are flight attendants and they’re asking her if she’d like anything to drink.

“If I didn’t want a drink, then I wouldn’t be on a plane to Betty Ford, now _would_ I?”

That’s what she _almost_ says, but instead, she takes a deep breath and exhales a request for a club soda. Jim orders water and folds up his paper. They bring their trays down, their drinks are poured, everybody smiles, and then the cart’s gone, off to the next row.

It’s only as she watches the little bubbles floating and popping in the soda that she realizes they haven’t said anything to each other since Jim engaged the child safety lock in the car. She also doesn’t realize she’s been drumming her fingers against the cup, probably in a subconscious attempt to fill the silence.

She’s shrinking into her seat just a little bit, focusing on the clouds out the window again. Two little words start pressing against her, two little words she can’t stand, but the silence seems more obvious for every minute that goes by without her saying them. So she closes her eyes, takes another breath, and lets it go.

“I’m sorry I kicked you in the shin.”

She’s pretty sure she mumbled that, so she’s not entirely sure if he heard it or not.

“Oh, that’s quite all right,” he replies, smiling somewhat nervously. “I’m sure the pain will go away by next Tuesday.”

Heaving a sigh, she continues. “And I’m sorry I bit your arm. That was a bad moment.”

“Well… at least your… teeth are clean.”

“And I’m sorry I called you a-”

“OH, that- that’s all right; you don’t need to repeat it.”

She stares at the soda again. The bubbles aren’t popping as strongly as they were before, and they’re almost all gone. Out of the corner of her eye she catches Jim taking a slow sip of his water, and then she turns to look at him.

“You really think I can do this?”

He stops. Very slowly, he sets his cup down on his tray. He turns toward her and says, with his quiet gravitas once again in full force, “Of course I do, Slugger.”

Smiling softly, she turns back to her soda. The bubbles are gone, and it’ll certainly be nice and flat by now. Nevertheless, she raises the cup to her lips and takes a sip.

It fails to heat her chest. In fact, it barely even tingles on the way down. But it’s okay, and she takes another sip.

\---

The first person she calls after the first day is Frank. The first thing she says to him is, “There’s a really nice desk in here. I’m thinking about carving things into it. Got any suggestions?”

He laughs. “‘I survived Betty Ford and all I got was this lousy shirt’?”

“I don’t think they give you a shirt.”

“Yeah, probably not.”

“If they do, though, I’ll try to get an extra one for you.”

He laughs again. “Gee, thanks.”

“Who knows, it could help you out on blind dates.”

“Yeah, probably _not!_ ”

This time they laugh together. It doesn’t last long, but it’s nice. Soon they’re only listening to faint rustling on either end of the phone again, but it’s still nice.

“So, how many headlines have I made?” She already knows the answer. It’s surprisingly easy to keep up with the news in here. She just wants the satisfaction of hearing him say it.

“All of them,” he responds. She can hear the smile on his face, and she follows suit.

“Well, you know what they say. ‘Anything worth doing is worth doing well’.” She pauses for a moment and then asks what’s really on her mind. “How’s Jim doing, by the way?”

“Eh… He’s limping a bit, but he’s okay,” Frank replies. Murphy winces and puts a hand to her forehead.

“I _really_ feel bad about that.”

“Yeah, well, he had to have known what he was getting into by doing what he did, right? I’m surprised you didn’t just kill him right there.”

She sighs. It’s going to take more than a few minutes to get rid of the guilt here. “Can you tell him ‘thank you’? You know, for flying with me. And then, you know, driving me here.”

“Sure.”

“And also, you know, for taking my bags and coming inside with me and-”

“Uh, should I be getting a notepad? Maybe some recording equipment?”

If only they were in the same room; she could’ve smacked him on the arm. It would’ve stung, too. Instead, she picks up the pen that had been resting on the desk and bites down on it, hard. It’s not a pencil, but it’ll have to do.

They say that best friends don’t always need to talk to each other, that the true indication of closeness is mutual comfort in silence. They must be pretty damn close, then, because they’re still not saying a whole lot. What’s there _to_ say, really? “Gee, I’m sorry you have to shell out 24 grand on the other side of the country because you don’t know when to call it quits”? “Hey, at least your liver will thank you for this”? “How far do you think Phil’s profits will nosedive without you”?

She glances at her watch. 6:45. It’s almost 10 in D.C.

“It’s getting late,” she tells him. “I should let you go.”

“ _Late?_ Come on, it’s only 10! They can’t be grilling you _that_ hard already, can they?”

“They made me talk about my feelings, Frank.”

“Ooh…” She can’t see him, but she can feel him recoiling.

Now that the pen’s out of her mouth, she starts rolling it across the desk, catching it with her free hand just before it careens over the edge. She tosses it back and forth like this for a while. She’s not quite sure how long she does this, but she’s concentrating on it hard enough to be startled when Frank speaks again.

“You’re gonna be okay, Murph,” he says. It’s a little out of the blue. She stops the pen with one finger and doesn’t let it go. She doesn’t realize her shoulders are tense until they relax.

“Thanks, Frank.”

“I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Bye.”

“Bye.”

As soon as she returns the phone to its cradle, she grabs the pen and shakes it a few times. She presses it hard against the wood, right near the edge of the desk, and draws a straight little groove into it. A little bit of ink comes out, staining the wood forever (if no one comes and scrubs it clean, that is). She’s carved her first tally mark into the desk. The dirty messages can get chiseled in later. She’s sure that as things progress, she’ll have plenty of obscene things to immortalize on the smooth wooden surface. But they can wait, because she’s got 29 more tally marks to get in there.

29 days to go. 29 days until sweet, sweet freedom. 29 days until she makes headlines all over again for drying out.


End file.
